


Kisses

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Earth, Angst, Dehydration, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, Growing Up Together, Human kisses, Letters, Love Confessions, M/M, Malnourished, Practice Kissing, Rambling, Spock Grows Up On Earth, Tarsus IV, Through the Years, Underage Kissing, Vulcan Kisses, excessive kissing, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-10 07:19:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13497346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Some kisses shared throughout the years between Jim and Spock as they grow up together. (A Spock-and-his-family-moved-to-Earth-after-Spock-was-bullied-on-Vulcan AU.)





	1. Twelve and Fifteen

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up in the morning with this fic fully formed in my brain, and all I had to do was write it down.

Jim is twelve when his mother gets an emergency call and has to shuttle down to the closest Starfleet base. 

“I’ll only be gone for a little while,” she tells him, smoothing the hair at the top of his head. Jim leans into the touch. “Why don’t you have Spock over?”

Jim knows what that means. It means that she wants Spock to babysit him, because she trusts the half-Vulcan more than she trusts her own son. He doesn’t really mind, though. It’s a fair assessment, given that he drove a car off a cliff last year and Spock has spent his time on Earth doing nothing but studying. Spock is fifteen, only three years older than Jim is, but he also lived the first years of his life on a planet full of emotionless robots, so it kinda evens out and makes him the more responsible one. 

“Yeah, okay,” Jim agrees, and Winona smiles at him and kisses the top of his head before all but running out the door. 

 

It doesn’t take much for Spock to know he’s needed at the Kirk residence, and Jim knows it. It’s kinda an unspoken rule between the two families that if Winona needs help, someone will be there for her. 

Jim knocks on the door and Amanda answers, a soft smile gracing her features. He explains that he wants Spock to come over, that his mom isn’t there, and Amanda nods knowingly and invites him inside while she goes and finds her son. 

It isn’t long before the two boys are lounging in Jim’s room together. ( _ Jim _ is lounging. Spock is sitting, straight-backed, in Jim’s green beanbag chair, which Jim can’t help but marvel at, because who can manage to sit like that in a  _ beanbag chair _ ?) For a while, there’s silence between them. It’s a comfortable silence. Spock is reading a book —Jim glanced at the title when they first walked in and was immediately disinterested— and Jim is flipping through magazines that his mom had given him that she’d collected from her own childhood. He’s read most of them, but it doesn’t stop him from staring at the old celebrities, wondering where they are now and if they’re even still alive. 

He stumbles upon an article that he’s only skimmed before, and he reads it close this time, takes in all the words just because he can. And then… 

“Hey, Spock?”

Spock looks up from his book. “Yes, Jim?”

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

Spock’s cheeks immediately tinge green, and he looks away from Jim’s face. Jim waits patiently for an answer, well-aware that Spock sometimes needed  _ time to process _ when it came to the blunt statements he had a habit of blurting out. 

“No,” Spock finally answers, not looking at him. “I have not.”

Jim is quick to reassure him. “Hey, that’s okay! Neither have I,” he tells him, and then immediately frowns. “We-e-e-ell, me and Lexi M. from school tried to kiss once, but her breath smelled bad, so it wasn’t a good kiss. It doesn’t count,” he says decisively. Spock still isn’t looking at him, so Jim wiggles upright in his own beanbag —his is red, the same red as the car he sent flying over the cliff last year— and nudges Spock’s leg with his foot. “Hey, you don’t gotta get so embarrassed. We’re friends. I don’t care if you never kissed anyone.” 

When Spock responds, his answer is so quiet that Jim almost doesn’t hear him. “I don’t know how to kiss the human way.”

Jim blinks, unsure if he’s even heard correctly. “What?”

Spock lets out a heavy breath, cheeks darkening in their emerald flush. “Vulcans do not kiss as humans do. I am aware of this. But I do not know how to kiss the human way,” he explains softly. 

“Oh.” Jim feels a little bad for him, but it’s short-lived as the solution hits him in the face. “Here!” He thrusts the magazine, nearly-forgotten in his left hand, towards Spock, and Spock looks up in faint surprise before reaching forward and accepting it. 

“What is—?” he begins, but Jim interrupts him excitedly. 

“It tells you how to kiss the best way!” he explains, bouncing a little in his chair. “You read that, and then we can practice.” 

“...practice?” Spock asks, staring down at the magazine as though he’s never seen anything like it before. 

Jim nods enthusiastically. “Yeah. The article says that it’s good to practice kissing if you wanna get better, so you can practice on me. I bet your breath smells better than Lexi M.’s does.”

Spock has gone along with more harebrained schemes than this before, so it’s not a big surprise when he stops talking and starts reading. The green doesn’t fade from his cheeks, but Jim knows if he’s really uncomfortable with the idea, he’ll say something. That’s just how they are. Spock never minces words; it just isn’t in his nature. 

Spock reads through the article silently, and Jim gets bored of watching him after a minute and finds another ‘zine to immerse himself in for the time being. It doesn’t take long for Spock to finish reading and set the magazine down on the floor gingerly, though, and Jim in on him the instant he does. 

“You got it?” he asks, and slowly, hesitantly, Spock nods. “Cool.” He glances around the room and points to the bed. “We should probably practice up there. It’s less…” He wiggles around for emphasis, leaving that to finish his sentence before struggling upright. (He loves his beanbag chairs, but they make moving so hard sometimes.) 

Spock somehow manages to gracefully extricate himself from the chair he’s in —stupid Vulcan smoothness— and makes his way to the bed. He joins Jim, automatically sitting cross-legged in front of him. Jim grins. 

“Mmkay. So the article said the best way to start is to just lean in and ‘take the plunge’,” he quotes, and Spock nods once, albeit a little nervously. “So I’m just gonna…” Jim trails off again, this time to lean forward and fix his lips to Spock’s. 

It’s awkward. There’s no other way to describe it. Jim is too enthusiastic and overzealous and Spock isn’t moving at all and Jim’s teeth keep getting in the way. Spock pulls away after a few seconds, his face too green. 

“I do not believe I am very good at this.” 

Jim is unperturbed. “That’s why we’re practicing!” he maintains, and Spock, though obviously uncertain, slowly nods again. “Try moving your lips this time. Maybe tilt your head?” Spock nods once more, and Jim smiles encouragingly before schooling his features into something more neutral and leaning in again, tilting his own head a little to the side. 

Their noses collide, and they both pull back with twin grunts of surprised pain. And then, Jim starts giggling, bringing up a hand to rub gingerly at his own nose. 

“Okay, that… that didn’t work,” he says through his laughter. Spock is rubbing his own nose, looking rather put-out. 

“You told me to tilt my head,” he accuses, and Jim’s other hand goes up above his head in an obvious surrender. 

“I did! That’s what people always do in the holos!” he defends, but Spock still looks put out, so Jim tries to get his giggle fit under control. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. That was my bad. What if you try tilting your head left and I’ll tilt my head right?” 

Spock frowns. “That is what we just did,” he points out, and Jim stares at him blankly, attempting to figure out if he’s right or not. 

“We need to tilt our heads the same direction, because we’re opposite one another,” Spock adds in explanation, and Jim’s mouth forms an “O” of understanding. 

“Got it! Okay, I’ll tilt right —my right— and you tilt your right, and then we won’t bump heads again.”

“We only bumped noses,” Spock points out, and Jim shrugs. 

“It still hurt,” he says, and Spock nods, conceding. “Okay. Time to try this again.”

This time, they both lean forward, so they end up meeting lips sooner than Jim expects. Their heads are both tilted properly, though, so there’s no pain. 

Jim is still too enthusiastic, but Spock’s lips are very-slowly moving against his own. It’s far from a perfect kiss, Jim is pretty sure, but it’s nicer than kissing Lexi M. Jim shifts forward to try and find a better angle, one where his teeth won’t feel like they’re in the way, and nearly breaks the contact. He lets out a soft puff of laughter against Spock’s lips before kissing him again. 

Spock is still sitting up straight and stiff, but he’s leaning forward too, and at some point during this much-longer practice-kiss, his hand ends up on Jim’s knee to steady himself. Or maybe to steady Jim. He isn’t super sure which it is, but he doesn’t mind it. His own hands are still sitting awkwardly at his sides, and about halfway through their practice-kiss, he had a jolting realisation that people always touched the person they were kissing in the holos. He winds up slapping Spock in the face just a little as he attempts to hold onto his cheeks, and it takes some adjusting to make it feel like Spock wasn’t making fish-lips at him because Jim was squishing his cheeks. 

When they pull away, it’s pretty mutual, and Jim immediately brings up a hand to his mouth. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and looks up to see Spock doing the same thing. He can’t help it; he laughs again. 

“What?” Spock asks, cheeks as green as the beanbag he’d been occupying earlier. 

“Nothin’,” Jim responds, grinning at him. “That was cool. You’re not bad at kissing. You just probably need more practice.” 

The outside of his mouth now dry, Spock pokes at his own lower lip carefully with a fingertip. “As do you. I believe that you bit me,” he complains. Jim giggles again, and slaps a hand over his mouth. 

“Whoops,” he mumbles. “Sorry, Spock.” He’s far more amused than apologetic, though, and he knows they both know it. Spock only shakes his head, but Jim sees the way his eyes shine, the way they do when he’s having fun and refuses to admit it because it’s too human to have emotions. 

“You wanna try again?” Jim asks, uncovering his mouth and grinning wide. Spock shakes his head too quickly, wincing, and then tries to save himself. 

“I do not believe any more practice is necessary at this time, since neither of us will be kissing any other individuals anytime soon, and—“

Jim bursts into another fit of giggling. “It’s— fine— Spock—“ he wheezes, falling down on his back onto the bed. “I was— joking—oh my god, the look on your face…”

Spock makes a face at him, which only serves to incite more laughter, and then slides easily off the bed and retakes his seat on the beanbag chair. 

“I am going to read my book,” he announces pointedly, and Jim’s only response is another burst of loud, uninhibited giggling. 


	2. Fifteen and Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock does what he can in the aftermath of Tarsus IV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter does contain heavy subject matter, including Tarsus IV and vague descriptions of what Jim and his kids went through there. Read with caution and consider the tags.

Jim is fifteen when he gets back from Tarsus IV. He is dehydrated and emaciated and  _ feral _ , and he won’t  _ \--can’t-- _ cooperate with any of the scientists that keep poking at him and prodding and asking him questions. The only thing he responds to is to food, and he doesn’t eat it. Instead, he hordes it, waiting until he is alone in the room before hiding it under pillows, in cupboards, under the bed. Anywhere the food can hide, it hides, and Jim stares frantically around whenever anyone takes it from him and yells about how he needs it for his kids. 

They keep him sedated for the entirety of the journey back to Earth, and he floats through life in a state of vague unconsciousness for weeks, until an eighteen-year-old Vulcan with a bright future ahead of him requests access to view the footage of him. 

The Vulcan is the son of an ambassador, and he is granted clearance. Jim catches this information in foggy bits and pieces, and barely remembers that he knows it when a stranger with pointed ears and sloped features steps quietly into his room one day. 

“Jim,” he says, and Jim blinks at him, but does nothing else to respond. He can’t, not with how many cocktails of drugs he’s been given. Something like concern flashes over the Vulcan’s face, and then there is silence for awhile. The Vulcan crosses the room and does not bother him. Jim nearly falls asleep. 

“I have disabled the recording equipment for the duration of my visit,” the Vulcan announces, and Jim drags his eyes back open to find dark eyes staring intently into his own. Jim swallows hard, finds himself shaking just slightly. 

He  _ recognises _ those eyes. 

“You wish to see the other children.” It isn’t a question, but Jim is  _ struck  _ by just how much understanding in pressed into those words. Jim has known since he was a small child that Vulcans being emotionless was a complete lie, but the intensity of their emotions still has a habit of catching him off-guard. 

“I will do my best to help, but you must cooperate with the doctors. They do not believe you stable enough, but I have looked through your records. I disagree with them.” There is a pause; the Vulcan takes a seat in the chair beside Jim’s bed. “I  _ know _ you, Jim. You are stronger than they believe you are.”  

Jim doesn’t remember how to make words, doesn’t know how to put the sounds together and force them through his chapped, chapped lips. But he stares up, up, up into the eyes that he recognises, and he shudders hard and one of his hands clumsily shifts at his side where it’s been resting. 

“...Spock,” he rasps, and Spock doesn’t smile, but his gaze warms, just a little. 

“I am here, Jim. I will do what I can.” 

There are tears in his eyes; Jim can feel them when he blinks, and for the first time since the announcement of the List, he doesn’t shut his eyes tightly against him. Instead, he lets them fall, because this is  _ Spock _ , who has seen him at his worst and who he knows will have his back, even when he does something incredibly stupid like break into Corrina McKinley’s house because she took his favourite baseball cap when they were little kids. 

They’re not little kids anymore, but the memory surfaces, and it’s enough to ground him. It’s the most grounded he’s felt since… he can’t remember when. 

“I am here,” Spock repeats, and cool fingers brush his cheeks, wiping away the salty, salty liquid gathering there. Jim shudders again, and Spock immediately retracts his hand, but Jim panics immediately because he didn’t mind the touch and doesn’t want it to go away and he  _ throws  _ his hand at Spock. Everything is heavy and he’s exhausted but he puts all of his energy into moving his arm and it  _ works _ , even if it comes with a spike of dizziness and pain. He whines in discomfort, and then there is a hand touching his own, gingerly, and he abruptly shuts his mouth.

Jim stares at Spock, his breath coming heavy, and twitches his fingers against Spock’s palm, desperately attempting to find more contact that doesn’t come with pain. It takes a second, but slowly, Spock’s fingers close around his own, and Jim’s own fingers twitch again once before he lets out a deep breath and lets his heavy eyelids fall closed. 

 

Spock is gone when he wakes up again, and Jim thinks at first that it was just a cruel dream. The entire universe is conspiring against me, he thinks to himself groggily. Why not my mind, too? 

But not two minutes after he regains consciousness, one of the doctors walks into the room and begins checking his vitals, and he makes a comment about how his heart rate sure had spiked while he’d had a visitor. And Jim  _ hopes _ again. He’s nearly forgotten what hope feels like. 

A pretense at hope, for the sake of his kids, is one thing. Actually hoping is another, and it feels  _ remarkable _ . 

The next week passes in a blur as Jim forces himself to allow doctor after doctor to examine him, to offer him food, to give him diagnosis after diagnosis. He stays still for the examinations. He eats as much food as he can stomach without immediately throwing it back up. He listens as well as he can to the diagnoses. 

And at the end of the week, he feels  _ better _ . He doesn’t feel good, but he feels as though he might just improve after all, someday. He hasn’t been sedated, discounting the nights when he is so plagued by night terrors that he doesn’t fall asleep. And then, the doctors tell him that he will get to see his kids. 

Jim cries again, and he doesn’t even care. 

 

His kids are all as skinny and nervous as he remembers, but they’re improving, just like he is. Jim is immediately set upon when he steps into the room, and all of his kids are there, and they’re hugging him and crying and Jim’s crying too and he whispers to them that they’re safe, and that he told them that they would be rescued. (Even if he never once believed it himself, back on the planet, Jim knows how important it is to the kids to let them know they’re safe.) Kevin starts the pile, tugging on Jim’s arm until he complies and lies down on the floor, and everyone else curls up to him, Thomas and David and T’lil all vying for the spot on his chest below his chin, and he holds them as best as he can until it’s time for them to separate again. 

Jim almost fights when they try to take him away, but there is a cool hand that he recognises that touches his arm, and he whips around --dizziness overtaking him momentarily-- to find Spock standing there in place of the doctor that he’d believed was still watching them. 

“Spock,” he whispers, and Spock nods once and helps him to stay standing when he sways. 

“They are in good hands,” Spock murmurs to him as he leads him back to his own room in the hospital. “As are you. You will be alright.” 

“Thank you,” Jim whispers, as Spock helps him back into bed. Spock smooths the hair on his forehead, the long, unkempt mane that has only been washed a few times since they have gotten back to Earth. 

“You are my friend,” Spock tells him steadily, and Jim takes his hand again. Spock lets him. 

“Thank you,” Jim mumbles, exhaustion creeping up on him, taking him by surprise. Spock does smile a little this time, his lips quirking up ever-so-slightly at the corners. Spock’s hand is calming, a soothing presence, their fingers pressed together gently. 

“Sleep, Jim,” Spock murmurs, and Jim grips his hand just a little tighter and does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a headcanon that there was a very young, very sickly Vulcan girl that was one of the kids that Jim took care of on Tarsus IV. Her name is T'Lil, and [tw] she ends up dying not long after this sequence takes place, even though everything possible is done to save her. 
> 
> This chapter was really hard for me to write, but this is a really important event, and I couldn't just *not* do it. Tarsus IV is really important to me in terms of Jim's character, and so I wanted to include it in these snapshots. While there's no human kissing, there *is* accidental Vulcan kissing. (Jim totally thinks about it waaaaay later on and goes "oh my god we were totally kissing.")


	3. Eighteen and Twenty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim visits Spock in San Francisco.

Jim is eighteen when he knocks insistently on the door to Spock’s small apartment in San Francisco. He is clutching a handful of letters in his free hand; they’re real, paper letters that crinkle as he clutches them even more tightly. They have been exchanging communication for months, even though Spock had raised an eyebrow the first time Jim had written him a proper note. 

(Jim  _ likes  _ paper, though, and when he tells Spock this, there is no argument from the other. Instead, Jim receives a paper note back, and their friendship is rekindled immediately.) 

There is no answer from the other side of the door, and for the first time since getting on the shuttle from Iowa, Jim is afraid that he got something wrong. Perhaps Spock doesn’t actually want to see him again. Perhaps coming here to surprise him is a mistake. Perhaps coming with the sole purpose of telling Spock just how he feels about him in person is a bad idea. Perhaps--

Jim shakes his head against his jumble of thoughts and knocks again, loud and more times than is probably necessary. 

There is more silence. A girl with a dark complexion and piercing brown eyes passes by him in the hallway, and she gives him an odd, too-long look. Jim does his best to ignore her, and she enters a room at the end of the hall. As soon as she’s out of sight, Jim raises his hand to knock again--

\--and comes face to face with Spock himself. 

He hasn’t changed much since Jim last saw him in person, and he’s changed even less since they last chatted via videoscreen. The sight of him is still enough to take Jim’s breath away, though, especially since his hair is damp and he is wearing nothing but a meditation robe. 

“Jim!” Spock breathes out, confusion colouring his tone, and Jim realises then that he has neglected to actually say anything to him. So he grins wide and throws up one hand in his best  _ ta’al _ , gaze never leaving Spock’s face. 

“Hey, Spock.” Spock’s eyebrows go up in an all-too-familiar expression, and Jim’s grin only widens even more. “Surprise!” 

Slowly, Spock raises his own hand in a proper  _ ta’al _ , and they both drop their hands at the same time, mirroring one another. “What are you doing here?” he asks, voice soft. He doesn’t seem like he knows what to do or say, but he doesn’t seem like he doesn’t want the company, either, so Jim is willing to take it as a good sign. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” he states, and Spock blinks once before stepping back and silently gesturing for him to come inside. “Did it work?” Jim accepts the offered invitation and steps inside, shutting the door behind him automatically. He uses the hand fisted around their letters, and he sees Spock’s gaze flick to it curiously before he looks back to his face. 

“Yes,” he says, and then hesitates. Although every fibre of Jim’s being wants to speak, he forces himself to wait. Spock has always been patient with him. He likes to be able to return the favour. 

It takes Spock a moment to compose himself, and then he straightens up slightly. “I am… glad, that you are here. I have been meaning to speak to you on an important matter, but I did not know how to approach it in our letters. I feared that it would not be proper. You are--” 

“I’m in love with you,” Jim blurts, and then it’s out in the air between them, and there’s nothing he’d rather than to be swallowed up by the floor. 

Of all the ways he’s been practicing saying it, of all the things he’s been planning to reveal, this  _ isn’t _ the most ideal. Jim feels himself flush under the weight of Spock’s gaze as he watches the way the other man’s eyes go wide and his throat work as he swallows back whatever Jim had interrupted him in saying. But Jim knows himself; he knows that if Spock is going to say something about how he doesn’t want their friendship to continue, or anything else serious like that, then it will be better if Jim says what he needs to now, before Spock gets a chance to break anything off. He needs to at least say it once, get it off his chest. 

“I’m-- that’s why I came. Because. I wanted to talk to you in person, because I’ve been rereading all your letters and every time I do I fall a little more in love with you? Which is really weird, because love is complicated and I don’t really know how to feel it. But I think I feel it a lot about you.” Jim starts rambling, because it’s too quiet in Spock’s apartment and Spock isn’t saying anything to confirm or deny that this is okay. “I meant to do something to show you… I don’t know, I was going to take you to a fancy dinner or something, or maybe ask you to take me to one of those lectures you’re always writing about? Because it’s so cool that you know so much about everything and stuff. Like, you’re only  _ twenty-one _ , Spock, and you’re a fucking professor. D’you know how cool that is?” Spock is still staring dumbly at him. Jim swallows hard. “It’s  _ really  _ cool. You have no idea how proud I was when you told me you’d gotten the position at Starfleet Academy. And… I mean, that was a part of the whole ‘realising-I’m-in-love-with-you’ thing, because I couldn’t stop talking about you to literally everyone back home, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you even when I wasn’t talking about you, and I just… I really fucking like you, Spock, and could you please say something so I can stop blabbering on like an idio--?” 

Finally, Spock interrupts him, although Jim isn’t expecting him to surge forward the way he does. He moves too quickly, inhumanly quickly, and for just a second, Jim flinches. He doesn’t really believe Spock would hurt him, but he’s also been through too much shit in his eighteen years of life to trust anyone implicitly. (Out of everyone in his life, Spock is  _ very  _ high on the list of people who have his trust, though.) 

Spock doesn’t hurt him, of course. He doesn’t swing at him or make any attempt at pushing him out the door. He  _ does  _ push him against the door, though, and their faces are suddenly close enough that Jim can smell something spicy and herbal on Spock’s breath. 

“I have loved you for years,  _ ashayam _ ,” Spock murmurs, and then there are warm lips against his own and Jim immediately forgets how to breathe. 

He doesn’t know what Spock just called him, doesn’t know what that word means, but he doesn’t care, because Spock is kissing him as though he’s never kissed anyone before in his life and it’s all Jim can do to wrap his arms tightly around Spock’s waist and kiss back desperately. He pours everything he can into that kiss, his love and his gratefulness and his fears and his desire, and he feels Spock reciprocating in kind, and he doesn’t know how to think, but he  _ does  _ know that Spock is hot and real and pressed against him, and nothing else matters because of that. 

 

It is only later, when the two of them are curled up together on Spock’s couch, that Jim begins to giggle, his face tucked into Spock’s chest as his body trembles with laughter. He can feel Spock frowning without looking at him, although it takes him a minute to control himself even with Spock waiting for an explanation above him. Finally, he pulls away enough to look up, and sure enough, Spock is staring at him, brows furrowed in confusion. 

“I was just thinking about kissing you,” Jim states, and the frown deepens on Spock’s face. 

“Is it really that humourous?” he asks stiffly, and Jim huffs out another laugh and presses his lips gently to the underside of Spock’s jaw. 

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he murmurs. “That’s not what I meant.” He presses another kiss to the warm skin beneath his lips. “I was thinking about when we were kids. Do you remember that one time when my mom left us alone, and--” 

“And you offered to ‘practice kissing’ with me?” Spock finishes for him. His tone hasn’t changed, but his shoulders have relaxed, and Jim knows that he’s forgiven for the accidental insinuation that Spock’s kissing was somehow hilarious and not utterly electrifying in the slightest. “Yes. I do remember. That  _ was  _ my first human kiss, Jim.” 

Jim hums in affirmation, working his way along Spock’s throat. “I was just thinking about that. Didn’t I, like, hit you in the face or something?” 

Amusement seeps into Spock’s voice, and it makes Jim smile against his collarbone. “...Yes. I believe that you did.” One hand comes up and curls itself into Jim’s hair; Jim hums again, leaning into the touch. “If I remember correctly, you also bit me.” Despite how long ago it happened, Spock still sounds as though he is pouting over it. Jim… laughs, warm breath puffing over the hollow of Spock’s throat, because it’s stupidly, ridiculously adorable. Then, he gets an idea, and he scrapes his teeth just barely over the skin beneath his mouth. 

“Bet you don’t mind biting now,” he murmurs, and he feels Spock’s breath hitch. It’s a slight catch, but it is there, and Jim smirks and files the information away for later. 

Spock tugs lightly on his hair; it isn’t enough to hurt, but it is enough that Jim feels it, and it’s enough of an answer for him. He noses at Spock’s collarbone in silent understanding, and the fingers relax again. 

“How do Vulcans kiss?” Jim asks after another few, blissful moments have passed, abandoning his efforts at kissing every inch of Spock’s stupidly flawless skin to pull back and look at him curiously. Spock’s eyes reflect surprise for just a second before they  _ glow _ , pleasure shining in his expression despite the way the rest of his features did their best to remain impassive. 

“Let me show you?” Spock offers, the statement tilting up at the end. Jim nods enthusiastically, and Spock reaches down to take his hand. Jim lets him, relaxing his fingers and allowing Spock to position them so that his index and middle fingers are together, outstretched from his palm. And then, Spock presses his own two fingers to Jim’s, and Jim  _ grins _ . 

There’s a tingling sensation that shivers down his arm at the contact, but it’s very faint. The best part of the exchange is watching Spock’s face, because his eyes fall shut almost immediately, and his lips part just slightly as he lets out a soft sigh. Jim experimentally moves his fingers against Spock’s, sliding them against one another, and Spock’s body relaxes even more against him. They stay that way until Spock finally pulls his hand away, dragging his fingers along Jim’s one last time before parting them completely. 

“Oh,” Jim whispers, because this is a whole  _ world  _ of possibility that he’s never even considered. “Vulcans kiss with their hands.” 

Spock, who still looks rather blissed-out beside him, gives only the tiniest of nods in response. Jim smiles fondly and curls up against his chest once more, snuggling in underneath his chin. 

“Hey, Spock?” he murmurs after a minute. Spock hums in response. “I’m going to kiss you the human way  _ and  _ the Vulcan way, for as long as you’ll let me. Is that okay with you?” 

Spock presses his lips to the top of his head, and Jim can feel him smiling. “That is agreeable,” he murmurs back. Jim smiles, too, and finds his hand blindly, lacing their fingers together. The gesture feels like cementing a promise, and Spock… 

Spock feels like coming home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta'al: Vulcan Salute  
> Ashayam: beloved
> 
> Thanks for reading this; sorry it was so CHEESY *wheeze* 
> 
> Kudos/comments are love! Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments are love. 
> 
> Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans


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